windshield
On this road
With its eighty turnings
A myriad times
Have I turned my head.
Gradually, more
Distant is my home.
(fragment of a poem by 7th century Nipponese poet Kakinomoto no Hitomaro, after parting from his wife)
I sit in my car at the stop sign, facing south. One road angles off to the west, into the setting sun and open land where anything is possible. To the east the road is dark, leading into a town I don’t know populated by strangers who I suspect are much like me in almost every way—except they’re in their warm homes and I am in a car at a stop sign, facing south. The road continues straight ahead, past a brooding Lizzie Borden house, passing through the dead snowy fields and small towns, ending eventually in someplace warm. Behind me is nothing but cold.
And yet I still want to turn around.
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